Name

 

Sapiens

(Definition- relating to, or resembling humans)

 

Writers Name

 

Megan Thoume

 

Contact

 

meganethoume@hotmail.co.uk

 

Tagline

 

A Story of Innocence, Slavery and Reality

 

Synopsis

 

Sapiens is a short film about the innocence and naivety of a young eighteen-year-old girl called Leah who goes to help out at her cousin’s farm for the weekend.

 

In this parallel society where Leah lives it is normal for humans to be farmed instead of animals. Sapiens are feral, enslaved humans breed for milk and meat.

 

Leah has grown up loving animals including sapiens just like her seven-year-old sister Millie but never truly understood how sapiens lived until that weekend on the dairy farm. Her naivety meant she never knew how 'human' they really where. Once Leah had grown a connection with one of the timid sapiens she realised that just because they can't speak and don't act like humans doesn't mean they don't have feelings and emotions. When Leah discovers that Johnny has been running the farm illegally and when she also finds out about all the distressing practices that go on at the farm, she knew she had to do something to help the sapiens, but she doesn’t want to hurt her cousin either.

 

That evening Leah over hears her cousin on the phone talking about slaughtering the sapien that she had grown close to. That conversation gave her the final motivation she needed to act. In the middle of the night Leah sneaks out to help set the sapien free, but will it be enough?

 

This sci-fi thriller is a story of innocence, slavery and reality.

 

Logline

 

In a society where eating human meat and drinking human milk is normal for society, a naive girl goes to help out at her cousins’ farm for the weekend.

 

Character Breakdown

 

Leah

 

Leah had always been outgoing and a very happy child, until her father walked out on their family.  She found this time in her life very difficult and ever since she has kept to herself a lot more and is very quiet and spends most of her time studying.

 

She has fond memories of being young and happy, which sometimes leads her to act child-like, make rash decisions and act naive.

 

When her mother remarried and had her little sister Millie (even though it was tough at first) it gave her hope that she could have a happy family again. But this time she is so desperate to make sure nothing can go wrong. She keeps quiet and does what her mother tells her so there are fewer arguments. But keeping all those emotions build up leads Leah to have a temper at times.

 

She loves her little sister but gets jealous that she has the life Leah wanted and that their mother gives Millie a lot of attention. Millie and Leah are similar in many ways especially for their love for animals and sapiens. Leah is a very caring girl and also very protective of her sister.

 

She doesn't see her cousin Johnny much anymore as he is on her father’s side of the family. But when Johnny calls her mother asking for help at the farm as his father is away, her mother sees this as a positive thing so Leah and her cousin can stay in touch. Leah feels awkward about doing it as she hasn't seen him in so long but listens to her mother and agrees to help out for the weekend.

 

When she gets to the farm and realises how similar sapiens are to humans, Leah takes on her big sister role and her protective side comes out.  Especially when she witnesses all the cruelty and sees the babies being taken away from their mothers and it reminds her of her family being split up too. As Leah knows how that feels she can't just watch and do nothing. When she finds out about Johnny’s money problems, will she use it against him to save the sapien?

 

Unfortunately with a mix of passion and naivety, she may have good intentions but she may not always make the best decisions.

 

Johnny

 

Johnny is an only child. He is twenty-eight-years-old and his mother died a few years ago. His whole life he has lived on a farm with his father and hopes to take it over one day. He is very hard working and ambitious. His father is very strict and grumpy ever since his wife died and has given up on the farm. Johnny has a caring side but tries to hide it, as he doesn’t want to appear weak to his father. Jonny is very rational and comes across hard with his emotions. He enjoys working on the farm but it takes up all his time and he doesn't really have a life outside it.

 

He doesn’t have many family members but family means a lot to him, so when his Uncle and their family stopped seeing him after his auntie and uncle divorced, it made him feel even lonelier.

 

Johnny needed his fathers help and they were in serious debt. His father had gone off to clear his head and left Johnny to it. His slaughtering licence had run out and he couldn’t afford to pay for a renewal. He also didn’t have enough money to pay for all the sapiens that needed slaughtering to get slaughtered, so he slaughters them himself, illegally. To make sure he doesn’t get caught he hires a licenced slaughter man every now and then so people don’t get suspicious. He had also run out of medicine to give to one of the sapiens that is ill and can’t afford to buy more so was planning to get it slaughtered. He needed someone to help out at the farm until he fixed his money problems but couldn't afford to hire anyone or have someone who new about farming that would realise he was going illegal practices. That's when Johnny phoned up his auntie to see if Leah was available to help him out.

 

Johnny always remembered Leah as a happy and outgoing child and they always got on well when they where children. However when Leah came to help out he was a little surprised how much she had changed. She was a lot quieter and didn’t really seem like she wanted to be there. Johnny started to feel like he had made a mistake inviting her but thought he would still see how the weekend played out. However he didn’t quite expect for it to go as badly as it did when Leah takes a disliking to the way the farm his run and finds out about the money troubles.

 

Timid Sapien

 

When she was born she was immediately taken away from her mother, so has always felt lonely and that something was missing in her life. Ever since her life has been full of constant misery and pain.

 

Now at sixteen-years-old not much has changed she is still as timid and scared. She keeps herself to herself and has never felt like she fits in.

Her most recent torcher was getting inseminated, she didn’t know what was happening and it caused her a lot of distress.

 

A few weeks later she was in a lot of pain and couldn't face eating. She new something wasn’t right but she had learnt a way to numb the pain

in her life.

 

When she first met Leah she was surprise she didn’t feel as intimidated as the farmer made her feel. But she was still unsure, as she was human.

After a few days of getting used to Leah she felt comfortable that Leah wasn’t going to hurt her.

 

One night when Leah came to let her out the field, she felt scared and confused, as that's all she had been used too. But after a few shoves she realised she trusted Leah.

 

The first thing she wanted to do was find her mother, after searching all night she manages to and feels so relieved, complete and happy. But the next morning brings her the most fear she has ever felt.

 

Pregnant Sapien

 

This sapien is thirty-years-old and has lived in fear her whole life. Due to the traumas of living on the farm she is very untrustworthy of anyone. She has so much love to give but finds it hard to show it as all her babies have been taken away and some killed. She has learnt to be very strong willed, but can never control herself and becomes very protective and aggressive, when it comes to the same time each year where she knows she has to go through having her babies and then having them taken away again and again.

 

When one of her children find her again she feels so happy but so scared as to what this may mean.

 

Mother

 

Judith had always had the ‘perfect’ life, she had loving parents; she always got good grades, she had her dreams job, a hard working and supportive husband and a beautiful baby girl even though she had her child at a young age it was the best choice she had made. She always thought her life was going to carry on that way until unexpectedly she found out her husband was having an affaire and was going to run away with his new girlfriend. This made her life feel as if it was crashing down and always blamed herself for being so oblivious and not knowing what had been going on, and believes if she had known there might have been a chance she could have prevented it from happening.

 

She was about to give up on life, when Leah became her guardian angel. She couldn’t forget about Leah and be selfish. She finally realised she had a purpose. After months of miserly she decided she could carry on crying or pick herself up and give Leah the life she disserves.

 

Judith started to regain control back in her life and do the best that she could for Leah. A few years later after finally becoming content with her life, Judith met a man through mutual friends and they clicked instantly. After only a short amount of time they got engaged and had a baby called Millie.

 

Having Millie completed her life as she could have a proper family again and finally be happy.

 

Now at 40-years-old Judith is a loving, slightly controlling, busy mother. She now has worked out the perfect balance between family and work (which she feels was part of the reason her marriage failed last time). She does everything for her children and cherishes and appreciates everything she has a lot more now.

 

When she unexpectedly got a call from Leah’s cousin, she was apprehensive at first as it brought back bad memories (as it is the cousin from Leah’s father’s side of the family). But when he asked for Leah’s help on his farm, he sounded really desperate. She new he was having money troubles and felt she needed to move on and let Leah keep in contact with her cousin.

 

Sister

 

Millie is a three-year-old outgoing, intelligent girl who gets lots of attention from her mother. She is well behaved besides being noisy and loves to sing. She looks up to her elder sister Leah a lot and they are very similar. They both love animals and are very caring. She is a very curious young

girl who always has to know what’s going on.  She gets a lot of attention from her mother and father but she is also very independent for her age. She loves to learn and read her picture books.

 

Slaughter Man

 

He had a very rough childhood, his father used to be very violent towards him and his mother. When he got old enough he ran away from home. He was homeless and jobless for a while until one of his friends told him about a job going as a slaughter man. He was desperate so

applied and got the job straight away.

 

He has been working as a slaughter man for thirty years now and is very used to it and it doesn't bother him.  He is now forty-six-years-old and he is slightly overweight and doesn't talk much. He cares little for animals and is very hard when it comes to his emotions.

 

Plot

 

The film start off driving past fields some of which have sapiens in. In this parallel world Sapiens are feral humans that are breed in captivity for human meat and milk. In this society it is completely normal to eat and drink human products and is seen as a delicacy. They are farmed just like cows and can’t speak. In the car is a mum called Judith dropping off her eighteen-year-old daughter Leah to help out at her cousin’s farm. Her little sister Millie aged four is in the car pointing out all the sapiens and counting them as sapiens are her favourite animal. Leah’s Mum explains to Millie that her sister is going to be helping their cousin on the farm for the weekend, as he needs a hand as their uncle is away. Leah is confused why he has asked her as she hasn’t seen him in years and he has never asked for her help before.

 

They arrive at the farm, driving past the sapiens in the field. The car pulls up and the farmer Johnny comes out of an old barn suspiciously and quickly goes over to greet them. Leah goes upstairs to put her stuff away. It’s wintertime so it is very cold so Leah puts a coat on and her wellies. When Leah goes back outside again Johnny isn’t there so she goes for a wonder and gets drawn to the old barn, she goes to look inside but it is locked. Suddenly Johnny comes over and he takes her to the sapiens field. He says that Leah has to to feed them, keep the barn clean and give them water and tablets. Johnny shows her one that is scared and says that its hard to get it to eat so will need to take more care to make sure it is eating. They talk about their disowning fathers and Johnny’s mother who died. They carry on feeding the sapiens and Leah looks at the timid sapien sympathetically. She goes over to it cautiously, surprisingly the sapien doesn't run away but when she goes to touch it, the sapien turns away.

 

It then cuts to bedtime and Jonny offers her some milk and says how it’s fresh from that day. Leah notices some unpaid bills on the table but thinks nothing more of it. They then go to bed and Leah looks out her window at the sapiens in the field, it then fades to black and the alarm goes off saying 5:30 AM. Leah sighs and rolls back over. Cuts to her putting her wellies on and running down the stairs as Jonny is calling her to hurry up.

 

She grabs a bucket from Johnny and starts to fill it up with water she notices a queue of sapiens going into a barn and a machine with a pipe and tub of milk. She stares, then the bucket starts to overflow so she turns the tap off and goes to the sapiens field. She just gets to the field and notices the timid sapien watching her and it starts to walk closer. She puts her hand out with some bread on and it slowly goes to take a bite, when she hears screaming and the sapien runs away. Leah goes to find out where it’s coming from. She gets to the barn, it isn’t locked, she pauses and pushes the door open. A sapien is giving birth she goes over to see the baby but the farmer has it wrapped in cloth and refuses to let her see it. He takes it outside the mother is still screaming and the girl asks where he is taking it. The baby is crying too. The farmer doesn’t say anything. The barn door shuts the girl doesn’t know what to do so she stands there still. ​Then a sudden gunshot goes off and everything goes silent. After a few long silent seconds the mother crawls off whimpering into a corner.​

 

Then it cuts to dinnertime. ​

 

Leah goes to walk into the kitchen but then hears Johnny on the phone talking about how the timid sapien hasn’t improved and now it has an infection and that someone will have to come and collect it the next day as there is nothing more they can do. She sees a business card reading ‘reliable, fully licenced slaughter man’ and a letter asking if he wants to renew his licence that is six moths out of date. Leah slowly walks into the kitchen. Johnny turns round not expecting to have seen her there. A timer goes off so Johnny goes to get the food out the oven. Johnny is acting lively like nothing had happened earlier that day. Leah is still in shock. He serves up some meat. Leah looks it shocking thinking was it the baby he had killed. Johnny laughs and says it isn’t and explains how his farm is a dairy farm. Johnny starts to eat in an animal like way and carries on talking to her with his mouthful. He then goes on to talk about how it will be her last day tomorrow and that this meal is a special treat. Leah picks at her food, when Johnny notices he tells her about why he had to kill the sapien because it was male and wouldn’t make him any milk. Leah still is upset and then asks to go to bed. He goes to get her a glass of milk but she refuses.

 

That night Leah can’t sleep, she phone call and the letters she read is going around and around in her head. She gets out of bed puts her willies and coat on over her pyjamas and creeps down the stairs. She goes to the sapien field and sets the timid sapien free. It doesn’t move at first but after she shoves it, it runs off. The next day Leah is putting some bread in a trough. It is her last day. She feels relieved that she managed to save the sapien. Johnny is confused looking around for the timid sapien. Her mum pulls up and asks how it was as the farmer comes out. He says thanks again for Leah’s help. Leah goes upstairs to get her bags and sees out the window a van turn up and Johnny and the man talking to each other and Johnny points to the barn. She rushes back downstairs, Johnny tells the man that the sapien is in the barn and they walk over to it. Leah looks confused and follows them.

 

They go into the barn and the timid sapien is in there huddled up to its mother. Leah shouts and tells them they can’t take her. The farmer explains how it caught an infection and there was nothing more they could do. The man goes and gets the sapien and heads towards the van. Leah stares at Johnny angrily. Then threatens to tell about his illegal practices. Her mother comes over to see what is going on and hears what Leah said. Leah finds out her mother new about Johnny’s money problems but not about the illegal slaughtering. Johnny is shocked that Leah found out. Leah threatens Johnny again and he walks off and Leah sighs as if to give up.

 

However Johnny takes the sapien from the slaughter man and tells him sorry for wasting his time. He gives the sapien back to Leah. Leah looks at Johnny as if to say thank you. She then takes it to its mother. Leah’s mother tells her to hurry up and get in the car. ​The van drives off. Leah gets in the car. Millie and her mother wave Johnny good-bye as they start to drive off. Leah looks relieved out the window and then sad, she has realised even though she saved the sapien there are still more that need help and Johnny is in debt still too. They drive off back past the fields from the start, while Millie is singing animal songs..

 

Shorter Plot

 

A naive teenage girl called Leah goes to help out at her cousin’s dairy farm for the weekend. However in this society it is normal for farms to not have cows, sheep and pigs but to have Sapiens, which are feral humans breed in captivity for meat and milk. Leah loves animals and sapiens but her naivety meant she hadn’t expected what farm life was really like. When her cousin shows her how the sapiens live and what she has to do to help, she never questioned it and presumed it must all be okay, even though it didn’t seem right. Then she starts to notice that Johnny has been having money issues and has been illegally slaughtering sapiens as he doesn’t have a licence.

 

 Due to Leah’s caring personality she grows attached to a timid sapien and realises they have feelings too. Nevertheless when more, shocking occurrences happen she realised the sapiens can’t be treated this way. Will she protect her cousin of the sapien?